


wheel of fortune

by jesimiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Season/Series 04, thanks for the inspiration charlie, yesss cas/ruby roleswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-11 22:49:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28625229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesimiel/pseuds/jesimiel
Summary: somewhere that isn't here, a penitent demon rescues sam winchester from hell, an angel manhandles dean winchester onto the path of heaven, and chuck shurley contemplates deleting this particular word document.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester (implied) - Relationship, Ruby & Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	wheel of fortune

**Author's Note:**

> personally i think they should've kept ruby around and given her a redemption arc if only because the sam-ruby-dean-castiel square is literally the funniest character dynamic ever conceived but i guess i'll just have to save my ideas for 2040 when i get hired to write scripts for the supernatural reboot. anyway [charlie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faedemon/pseuds/faedemon) this is for you i love you <3

**sam** startles back to life at a crossroads, a film of dust coating his sweat-slick skin and a dull, throbbing ache in his wrist, of all places. he stares at it. there’s an angry welt circling his forearm, in the vague shape of a small handprint. he lies in the road for a good long while, too stunned to move, too unwilling to believe his freedom, but eventually he can feel his skin growing tight with sunburn and he drags himself to his feet with some effort. 

he… has no idea where he is, but that’s probably okay. he’s on earth, at least, which is more than he was hoping for, and he thinks he can see a fuel-up in the distance. there’s a pair of small footsteps in the dust—they’re heading left, opposite of the gas station, and they’re not his. scrawled in the dirt with the tip of a knife are the words, _sam winchester is saved._

he edges towards the station instead of following the tracks, because he’s only really just beginning to realize how thirsty he is and it’s overriding any desire to solve the mystery. the windows of the gas station are busted out and the place is thoroughly abandoned, but there’s water bottles in the cooler and recent newspapers on the rack. september eighteenth, 2008. four months in hell. he wonders what pulled him out.

* * *

**dean** is in a hotel room, his hands full with an angel—in more ways than one—when the doorbell rings. he groans at being interrupted, and castiel mutters something un-angelic into his collarbone. after a brief staring contest, which dean privately thinks that he was allowed to win, castiel unglues himself and crosses the room in that weird way of his, like he’s a bolt of lightning trapped in a too-small bottle, before opening the door.

castiel says something about a pizza delivery, to cover up the fact that whoever’s at the door probably _shouldn’t_ be, but when dean hears bobby singer’s gruff voice his ears prick up—and when he hears _sam_ , he nearly hits the mirrored ceiling. castiel gives him deep blue side-eyes as dean shuffles him out a little awkwardly, but thankfully says nothing as he shrugs his jacket and overcoat on and takes his quiet leave. he walks out normally, instead of just… disappearing, like he sometimes does, and dean could kiss him for it.

he gets a dirty look for going at sam with the holy water, which he thinks he can probably be forgiven for. he also gets interrogated, but after he swears blind that he hasn’t been cavorting with demons—quite the opposite, actually, but his brother doesn’t need to know that—sam relaxes, and pulls him into a hug. he feels more real than dean thinks he ever has.

* * *

**sam** crouches, alone, on the dirty floor of the barn, putting the finishing touches on the devil’s trap spray-painted in the center. he stands and presses his back to the far wall, leaving nowhere for anything to get behind him, and braces himself for whatever’s coming. there’s the almost-inaudible click of a door latch, and with only that as warning, the doors swing open.

 _whatever’s coming_ turns out to be an unthreatening-looking girl in a leather jacket. she’s skinny, probably five-foot-four, with brown eyes and dark, wavy hair, and she yells _what the fuck_ when one of sam’s silver bullets goes through her shoulder. he doesn’t shoot again, and her hands raise in a _stand down_ gesture, but sam’s gun flies up again to point to the middle of her forehead as her eyes turn demon-black. she steps deliberately into the devil’s trap, boots scuffing at the red paint, and sam’s raised hackles lower again, slowly, slowly. she pulls a knife from her pocket and kicks it across the floor to sam, who collects it before flicking the safety back on his gun.

the demon girl’s name is ruby, and according to her, she’s the one who pulled sam out of the pit. she’s an escapee, apparently, on the run from hell’s branch of the ICE, and she’d taken sam with her as an extra passenger just to spite the higher-ups—higher- _up_ , singular, and ruby spits the name _lilith_ with genuine vitriol. sam can actually probably believe that, if only for the fact that he’s never seen a jumpier demon than ruby—she hugs herself with anxiety, and her eyes might be all sclera, but he can still tell when they flick nervously to the door. he asks her why she’d picked _him_ to raise, out of all the souls that must be in hell, and she shrugs with only the left shoulder, telling him that he seemed… righteous. and she needed someone righteous.

 _the end of the world is coming,_ she explains. _i want you to help me stop it._

* * *

**dean** does what he’s been practicing, what castiel has taught him. he clamps one hand on samhain’s shoulder and smacks the other palm against the demon’s forehead, willing himself to focus past samhain’s furious snarling and fucking _gank_ the bitch.

the remaining tendrils of castiel’s long-diluted grace curl in his chest like a physical presence, which, perhaps, it is. samhain’s face melts into shock, chest burning red and demon-smoke curling past the vessel’s lips down into the marble floor, back into the pit. dean’s eyes and mouth leak ice-white angel-light that reflects off of samhain’s pale eyes before fading along with the demon itself, the empty vessel collapsing to the floor as dean shakes off the contact high of tapping into his personal share of castiel’s cold-burning power.

he doesn’t notice sam at the threshold behind him, watching with narrowed eyes. when dean turns, sam is gone, and dean leaves, content that his secret is still safe.

* * *

**sam** narrows his eyes at castiel across the booth at a diner, shifting in his half-empty seat at the sight of the angel sitting with his brother on the other side. castiel is cordial enough, of course—sam hadn’t really expected less from a holy warrior of god, even if he _did_ look like a tax accountant—but he can’t shake the feeling that castiel… dislikes him. he isn’t particularly excited to be on the wrong side of an angel, especially not one that seems to care about dean—and _that_ was another can of worms altogether. sam keeps seeing two deans at once, both his brother and a weird expy of castiel, the ethereal light of borrowed grace pouring from his eyes and mouth as he exorcized samhain a permanent source of unsettlement in sam’s memory. 

they’re here on a tip, apparently, or so dean says—sam has to say, he’s a little jealous of dean’s direct pipeline to heaven’s gossip columns. he wishes ruby were here, but she’d made it clear she’d return to the rack of her own accord before getting within five hundred feet of castiel. dean may not trust ruby, but ruby’s _definitely_ suspicious of heaven and its intentions, including dean’s angel boyfriend.

castiel laces his long fingers together atop the table and tells them about anna milton, the girl who’d escaped from the asylum, and sam’s just about checked out of the conversation when he gets the words _sixty-six seals_ in castiel’s baritone and he sits up a little straighter. this anna girl’s been having visions, castiel reports, hearing things—she could know about the coming seals being broken, and she’s being targeted by demons intent on securing that information. sam and dean share a look, and dean shrugs. 

_guess we gotta get her._

* * *

**dean** puts a hand on anna’s shoulder the very second everything goes to shit. the door slams open to reveal ruby, and anna gasps in fright. ruby points to anna and shouts _she’s an angel—the demons are coming, hide her_ —castiel’s expression melts into what might be fear a millisecond before he immediately disappears with a flap of metaphysical wings, and dean swears loudly. he motions to sam for a blade, which he provides, and anna makes another strangled noise as dean slices a gash in his forearm. sam pulls anna into a back room, ruby locks the doors and draws the blinds after dean smears all the sigils he can fit on the windows. 

_fuckin’—god damn it, cas,_ dean hisses under his breath, not caring about the blasphemy and not bothering to make it a proper prayer. _where did you go? who did you talk to? what the hell did you **do**?_

alistair knocks on the door. ruby yells for sam, and castiel doesn’t answer.

* * *

**sam** waits pensively as anna gives him a kiss on the cheek—then dean, and then ruby, sidestepping alistair’s soldiers to do so. uriel holds castiel’s hands behind his back; sam’s sure that castiel is, of course, perfectly capable of breaking free, but he allows himself to be restrained for a reason sam can’t discern. 

the reason actually becomes clear a moment later, as castiel suddenly forces his elbow backward into uriel’s gut, and the room erupts into chaos. ruby’s knife goes through the neck of the demon on the right and the chest of the demon on the left in a quick-smooth one-two swipe, castiel pulls sam out of the way of alistair’s rage, and dean whoops with joy at the look on uriel’s face as anna rips the vial of her grace from around his neck. she slams it on the floor, shattering it and swallowing down the pearlescent plasma inside, and sam only barely gets his arm over his eyes in time for the detonation—anna’s gone when his vision clears, and so is alistair, evaporated from the explosion of grace. ruby’s only still hanging on because castiel had moved to stand in front of her. 

_what the hell just happened?_ dean asks after a moment, and sam has no idea how to answer him.

* * *

**dean** glares turkish demon-killing daggers at a reticent ruby over the long motel table. sam’s in the shower and castiel’s off doing some sort of angelic dirty business he hadn’t given any details of away, which leaves dean and ruby staring at each other until sam’s done and comes out to strike up conversation. this time, though, ruby beats him to it. 

_i’ve got alistair,_ she says shortly. _he knows more about lilith than he’s telling._

_what’re you gonna do about it?_

ruby jerks her head towards the bathroom door by way of answering, clearly indicating sam. _figure the best option’s to get him to make alistair talk._

 _no way,_ dean snarls, planting his hands on the table. the only thing stopping him from launching himself over the table at the very _mention_ of that idea is the plain pain in ruby’s clear brown eyes. _you can’t do that to him._

 _i have no choice, dean,_ ruby says quietly—sam’s turned the shower off. 

dean fumes, ruby casts her eyes downward, and sam dries off, oblivious.

* * *

**sam** hears a scratching noise and sees a flash of familiar tan out of the corner of his eye. he turns to look, castiel’s name on the tip of his tongue—but he’s not there. sam turns back around just in time to get alistair’s heavy fist to his face at a lucky angle and he goes down hard, slamming his head on something metal at a high enough velocity to make his teeth rattle in his skull. spots dance in front of his eyes as he fights to stay conscious. he sees a dark shape rush in—ruby—and engage alistair, the glint of her knife catching his eyes more than the demon herself. 

ruby’s good in a fight but she isn’t _that_ good, and a runaway rank-and-file demon’s never going to be a match against a white-eye. sam can’t even bring himself to move as he watches alistair slam ruby to the ground through half-lidded eyes, or as he hears alistair’s voice swim through his head, chanting latin above a squirming ruby. _exorcizamus te, omnis immundus…_ sam recognizes the incantation, but he can’t remember just where from.

there’s a shout, and a loud bang, and then ruby’s on her feet again, pulling sam up by the underarms and dragging him away from alistair and another figure, who sam must have missed the entry of. ruby’s talking, but sam can’t hear her—all his attention, wavering as it is, is stuck on dean, as his brother presses a calm hand to alistair’s forehead. alistair writhes in pain and dean _lights up_ —ruby gasps, and sam has _just_ enough rational thought left to realize that he’s _definitely_ concussed, because that’s the only way to explain the sheer volume of blinding angelic power leaking from dean’s eyes and mouth, the only way to explain the way alistair suddenly locks up as his own eyes begin to smolder and sizzle with the force of the exorcism, the only way to explain the ring of cold fire and grace-blue light that encircles the crown of dean’s head. _that’s castiel’s halo,_ sam thinks through the encroaching fog.

ruby mutters _sam, sam,_ trying to keep him awake, but it’s no use. he blacks out to the sight of his brother’s lightshow—the conduit of heaven, who would’ve thought!—and the feeling of ruby’s hair tickling the back of his neck.

* * *

**dean** wakes up to a panicked phone call from sam. ruby’s gone, he reports, hasn’t even left a note, but she’s left her fucking _body_ behind, and now sam’s got a sleeping stranger in his bed and demons on his ass—apparently an escapee from hell is hot enough real estate that lilith’s foot soldiers are still interested in the empty meat suit. dean pinches the bridge of his nose, taking deep breaths, drawn tight with the effort of trying not to scream.

the girl wakes up soon after dean meets up with sam. prognosis isn’t great—her name’s genevieve (she doesn’t remember her surname), she’s got no family or friends that are missing her, she hasn’t realized she’d been possessed by a demon, and the last thing she remembers is a car accident. sam groans in frustration at ruby’s decision to ride around in the body of a coma patient. 

they leave in a rush—sam wasn’t kidding about the demon stalking, and lilith’s goons are hot on their trail—and dean’s pretty thrown by genevieve’s willingness to accept what’s happening. honestly, he thinks she’s probably still in shock, but she’s good with ruby’s knife and quick on her feet for an accident victim, so he doesn’t push it. they dispatch the demons and check into a motel for the night with the names _deanna, samuel,_ and _gene windsor_ (genevieve, dean, and sam, respectively), which makes genevieve giggle. sam wracks his brains for clues, ideas, _any_ leads to where ruby might be hiding. dean doesn’t ask for castiel’s help, and castiel doesn’t offer it.

* * *

**sam** throws an attacking demon across a warehouse floor a millisecond too late. genevieve shrieks with pain, hands flying to her stomach—the demon’s dagger protrudes from just above her navel, blood beginning to soak the fabric around it. her eyes go very wide as she feels the knife inside of her. _shit_ , yells dean, pulling the last demon—a tall, wiry teenager with messy, dyed-black hair—into a chokehold, clapping his hand over the demon’s mouth to prevent it from smoking out too soon.

 _lemme go, it’s me_ , wails the demon, mostly muffled, his thin frame struggling in dean’s iron grip. _it’s me, it’s ruby!_ dean presses ruby’s own knife to his throat and tells him to prove it. ruby narrows his coal-dark eyes and jerks his head towards genevieve, catching sam’s gaze as he looks up from where his hand places just enough pressure on genevieve’s wound to stem the bleeding without dislodging the blade from her flesh. _let me out and i’ll heal her,_ ruby finishes seriously. _you have to trust me, or she dies._

_please_ , whispers genevieve against sam’s shoulder, prompting dean to look at her. genevieve takes a shallow breath. _you can—you can use… me_ , she says awkwardly, eyes flicking from dean to sam to ruby and back again. _use my body again. let that boy you’re in go_. dean looks to sam, who nods, and dean releases ruby rather roughly. ruby smokes out immediately, his vessel crumpling and his incorporeal form writhing through the air as it approaches genevieve. genevieve, to her credit, opens her mouth as wide as she can, and ruby rushes in without hesitation. she shudders once, twice, before gasping and looking up—eyes, again, gone black. they clear to brown as ruby shakes her head, like she’s trying to clear the water out of it. _wow, that’s always a shock._

dean watches as ruby unceremoniously pulls the knife from her stomach, heedless of the serrated edge, and keeps watching in clear disgusted fascination as the wound begins to knit itself together. sam slumps against the wall, all the adrenaline leaving him in one long wave. _fuck._

* * *

**dean** restlessly paces the beautiful room, its ostentatious opulence getting on his already-frayed nerves—endless marble and mahogany and gilded frames surrounding shifting pictures of biblical splendor aren’t really what he needs right now. he catches the eye of a painting of st. sebastian, gaze stuttering on the arrows sunk deep into his tortured flesh, and looks away.

why’s he here? well, because castiel asked him to be; told him that the world rested on his shoulders, that he was the only one who could stop lucifer’s reign of terror, that he was chosen, he was _special_. he’d certainly believed it at the time—perhaps he’d just been desperate to, but when sam wasn’t there, it had been castiel who had found him, helped him, shared his power, raised dean from proverbial perdition. he trusts castiel. he does.

he just wishes that he could say, with confidence, that castiel was telling him everything. because no matter how he slices it, the angel isn’t.

* * *

**sam** pounds on chuck shurley’s door at nine forty-five in the morning, ruby stifling a probably-feigned yawn at his side, and it takes a good ten minutes to get an answer. the prophet’s clearly hungover and pissed about the fact, deep bruises under bleary eyes and scruff even more unshaven than usual, but he _does_ let them in and plunks mugs of only slightly burnt coffee in front of them.

 _you’re not supposed to be here,_ chuck says shortly, voice tense. _this isn’t how i wrote it. this isn’t how it’s supposed to happen._

 _well, y’know, we’re making it up as we go_ , ruby grins.

chuck’s mouth thins out anxiously, but he gives them an address. ruby drives, and she floors it all the way to st. mary’s.

* * *

**dean** shouts until his voice is hoarse, but castiel doesn’t budge. he’s calm to the point of dean’s fury, which isn’t unusual but isn’t particularly appreciated in this context. he drones on about _god’s will_ and _destiny_ and _paradise on earth_ and _the sword of michael_ but dean’s not listening, ears buzzing with the betrayal, favoring smashing everything he can reach in a last-ditch attempt to make his mark on the beautiful room before michael comes to collect. it doesn’t _count_ as a yes, he argues, if he doesn’t know what he was saying yes _to_ —he’d been coerced, manipulated, tricked, forced—but castiel assures him drolly that it does, of course, count in an archangel’s many, many eyes. dean shoves castiel back against the wall by the shoulders, and castiel lets him, blue eyes holy and divine and blank as anything. 

after everything, dean winchester thinks his greatest achievement will be pulling a fast one on an angel of the lord. his hand’s in castiel’s coat pocket in a flash, drawing out and gripping his weapon before castiel can react. his head fills with static and the beautiful room shakes as michael draws nearer, and in one last _fuck you_ to the heavenly host he’d signed himself away to, dean grits his teeth and jams the angel blade into the hollow beneath castiel’s ribs.

michael screeches in rage as castiel gasps, his impassive face cracking into a glimmer of what can only be surprise, dismay, _disbelief_ as the thin dagger goes deep enough to lodge in the wall behind him. dean doesn’t close his eyes at the blinding flash of grace-light, and blinks away spots in his vision as he steps away from the shadow of wings scorched into the wall, letting castiel’s empty vessel collapse to the floor. 

dean slumps against the wall, all his energy drained. he can barely keep his eyes open, both from exhaustion and from michael’s descent, which is fucking _blinding_. he doesn’t bother to cover his ears or to try to escape or even to shout for help—he just sits there as the beautiful room falls apart, clutching castiel’s blade close to his chest, and very carefully does not look at the angel’s glassy eyes.

* * *

**sam** drops ruby’s knife, the clattering noise of it falling to the church floor much louder than it should be in the smallish room. lilith’s corpse falls heavily to the granite, still bleeding sluggishly from the stab wound in her stomach. he wipes a sheen of adrenaline-sweat from his forehead, turning to the huge arching doors of the crypt. they’re closed, and they’re locked. did lilith do that?

behind him, ruby _screams_ , a chilling sound of incandescent terror. and sam whirls around to face her—she’s scrambling away from lilith’s body, the slow trail of blood from the fallen demon lengthening and thickening, curving in on itself to form… a summoning circle. sam’s stomach pools in his shoes as he drags ruby away from lilith and pulls her close, shielding her, at ruby’s low, panicked muttering of _no, no, no_ —sam asks her what’s happening and she cries that it’s the end, that lilith’s death is summoning lucifer, that she didn’t _know_ and that she’s so, so sorry, _i don’t want to go back to hell, i don’t want to die—_

and then she’s gone, nothing left but a cry of sam’s name on the wind that’s picking up in the room, blowing around sam’s hair and lilith’s dress and banging open the stained-glass windows. he calls her name, again and again, to no response save for the roar of the supernatural gale. the room glows to blinding as lucifer claws his way through the circle of lilith’s blood, and sam’s got his back against the locked doors as they shake from the force of the devil’s ascent, and everything is happening so fast that all he can do is squeeze his eyes shut.

* * *

**sam and dean** blink awake, and they are sitting in an airplane. dean has the window seat, sam’s in the aisle. there’s a flight attendant in red lipstick and a pencil skirt a few rows ahead of them, offering a cola to a pretty blonde girl. 

dean stares at sam, at lilith’s cooling blood slicking his brother’s palms. his ears ring with a pale phantom of michael’s voice, and he can barely see in the low light of the cabin, adjusted to the brightness of the presence of angels. 

sam stares at dean, at the charred ash of carbon feathers dusting his brother’s shoulders. ruby’s parting words echo in his head, bouncing around painfully, and lucifer’s snarling grin may as well be burnt into the insides of his eyelids.

 _end of the world,_ dean says lowly into the quiet you only ever get on overnight flights. sam just nods. he can’t really do anything else.

* * *

across the country, chuck drops his head into his hands. yeah, this isn’t how it was supposed to go at all.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry about any lore inaccuracies i only watched up to s11


End file.
